While Ginetta may not be a household name in U.S. racing circles, the UK race company has made a name for itself in fostering new driving talent within Europe. Drivers such as Genesis Magma Racing test and reserve driver Jamie Chadwick, NTT IndyCar Series rising star Louis Foster and even reigning Formula 1 champion Lando Norris all got their starts in the Ginetta Junior Championship in the UK.

Known as an affordable and educational entry point for aspiring drivers, the Lawrence Tomlinson-owned group is now hoping to extend the success of its products into the North American market, namely in helping develop up-and-coming and amateur drivers for SRO America competition.

Its recent deal with SRO Motorsports Group that has seen the Stephane Ratel-owned organization take over race operations of Ginetta’s Juniors, GT Academy and GT Championship series, which forms a core part of the British GT Championship, has further aligned itself with SRO, which has served as the organizer and promoter of the the national championship for more than 20 years.

With a successful business in building and selling cost-effective race cars, ranging from G40 Junior Evo to the G56-based GTA, GTP8, GT4 Evo and GT2 models in the UK and Europe, Ginetta Motorsport CEO Mike Simpson says they’re working to expand that model fully into North America.

It established Ginetta North America in 2021 by acquiring a controlling interest in U.S.-based low-volume sports car manufacturer TMI AutoTech and its 60,000 square-foot headquarters in South Boston, Virginia before launching Ginetta Challenge North America for its V6-powered GTA cars within the SVRA competition, which has so far served as the foundation for its U.S. motorsport involvement.

According to Simpson, an active effort is underway to ramp up its involvement in the motorsports ‘country club’ scene in the U.S. to offer a direct pathway from track days to entry-level racing and into professionally run series such as SRO America.

“There’s a three-pronged attack,” Simpson tells Sportscar365. “We want agents to specifically sell the race cars; that’s our bread and butter. Then we’ve got the clubs, getting into [racing] resorts, trying to get members to buy the cars, and then have club racing. From that, you then take those people that want to step up to SRO.

“Our Ginetta Challenge we have with the V6 car is running well, anywhere from 15-20-plus cars this year. It’s SVRA but again, it’s just a feeder. Globally we’re partnered with SRO. They run all of our UK series, including Ginetta Juniors. They firmly see the job Ginetta does to put people on the grid.”

Simpson says that 48 drivers competing in British GT graduated from the Ginetta UK grids, a correlation he could see being replicated in the U.S., but in SRO America competition.

While Tomlinson has been racing the G56 GT2 car in GT America powered by AWS competition this year, Ginetta’s GTP8 model is also eligible in the single-driver sprint series, in a dedicated Cup class, with David Lecko (pictured above, right with Lawrence Tomlinson) having been among the first graduates from Ginetta Challenge North America.

“GT America is great because it’s only for the Bronze drivers who are buying the cars,” says Simpson. “That model has changed a lot since COVID where the actual end user — consumers — buy the car. In my [racing] day, it was always the team would pick the brand, buy the car and sell the seats. Where now you’re relying on the Am to come with the car and a service provider would run any type of car.

“Our business model is to go direct to the consumer, tell them why they should migrate from [track days] into racing, in our product. If we do that, hand-hold them through that journey, we should be able to direct them in.

“Support is key. There’s no point in selling a car to a club [racer] if you can’t support it. Every car when it’s brand new is very reliable but when it gets to the end of the year you’ve got the routine maintenance to do and you’ve got to have that network around.

“We’ve spent the last 24 months really upping what we do. We’re on an a active search for good partners, good distributors who can sell the cars and service them in different regions [of the U.S.].”

Simpson says Ginetta North America, run by Mark Swain, has the same capability as its UK headquarters in Leeds to build and service cars, which is critical given the fluid geopolitical tariff situation, which has led Ginetta to have a large stockpile of cars and parts in Virginia.

“We need to do a good job of showing that pathway into professional motorsport,” says Simpson. “Europe is tightening, with what’s going on. The top will always be strong but that mid-level type of racing which is Ginetta is aimed at, the entry point to professional racing, there’s a little squeeze there.

“For me, the buoyant market is here [in the U.S.]. I see a new culture happening here, which is club racing, maybe less officiated, but more events where you drive people to the clubs on the weekends, you get people having fun and you take them on this journey of being a track day user to be a race driver, get them with a good driver coach who can prove them.

“Then you bring them to SRO. It’s clubs, into the Ginetta Challenge, or straight into GT America as a Bronze driver. We’ve got some younger guys and some Pro-Am pairings that can do GT4.”

The G56 GT4 Evo, which is eligible for GT America and Pirelli GT4 America competition, is priced at $275,000 USD and is considered to be in the middle range of Ginetta’s offerings, with the GTA ($135,000) and GTP8 ($225,000) more affordable options according to Swain.

Unlike traditional OEMs, Ginetta doesn’t have a GT3 offering as it doesn’t mass-produce production cars. Instead, Simpson says they’re more than happy to see their customers eventually graduate into other brands.

“Hopefully they’ll stay with us for a couple of years,” he says. “Maybe they’ll end up in a Porsche or a Ford or whatever GT3 [car]. But without Ginetta doing what we do, we’re laying the foundation. 

“Ginetta is the first touch-point for Stephane [Ratel] outside of his GT4 entry point,” he says. “We’re very proud that we are the starting car in Europe, really, where you come in, you learn your trade as a junior or as an amateur in the V6 and you end up racing a Porsche or a BMW.

“But without Ginetta, people like Darren Leung and people like this who do many programs, we find them and bring them in. We get them all in the same environment, racing together, and if we do our job well, we can retain them for five years.

“We’re very proud to have competed with the manufacturers, and have done very well in all categories, but it’s taken us 20 years to understand our place in [motorsports].”

Photos: Andrew Miterko/SRO, Ginetta North America & Kaizen Autosport

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Should the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli ever decide to emulate the Hungaroring by naming some of its corners in honor of drivers that furthered their claims to greatness on its tarmac, then it could do worse than single out Charles Weerts. The BMW factory driver’s double victory at last month’s GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup meeting took his tally of wins at the Italian circuit to ten and broke a significant record in the process.

A controlled victory in Misano’s day-into-night opener alongside Kelvin van der Linde meant Weerts, already a four-time series champion, surpassed his former co-driver Dries Vanthoor to become the all-time most successful driver in the championship that began in its current form as the FIA GT Series in 2013.

Then in Race 2 WRT’s pit crew turned their No. 32 BMW M4 GT3 EVO around faster than the Verstappen Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, which van der Linde had followed into the pits, and Weerts did the rest to secure Sprint Cup victory number 20.

The understated Belgian has gradually established himself as a GT3 benchmark with little by way of noise. Having no presence on X, he prefers instead to let his results to do the talking.

A winner of at least one race in every season he has contested the Sprint Cup (12 aboard WRT’s Audi R8 LMS Evo and Evo II, eight in a BMW), the 2024 Intercontinental GT Challenge champion has plenty of time on his side to add more accolades to a CV that many would justifiably envy.

The 25-year-old also holds records as the youngest Sprint Cup race winner (18) and champion (19), as well as the most podiums (44 to date) and titles. With his and van der Linde’s Sprint Cup points lead still narrowly intact despite a weekend to forget at Magny-Cours, there is every chance that Weerts will be in contention for a record-extending fifth championship when the current season concludes in October at the Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona.

Although Weerts showed promise in single-seaters, beating the likes of Liam Lawson and Frederik Vesti to claim a maiden ADAC Formula 4 victory at Hockenheim in 2018, it was no surprise to Pierre Dieudonne that his true calling should be in GTs. The WRT sporting director and two-time winner of the Spa 24 Hours as a driver has known Weerts since his childhood, having joined the team co-founded by Weerts’ entrepreneur father Yves in 2011.

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For anyone who watched it live, it’s almost hard to believe nearly half a year has passed since Ralf Aron’s awful crash during this year’s Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour.

Sickening images of the Craft-Bamboo Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo being driven by Bathurst debutant Aron, leading the race at the time, ploughing into the stricken Tsunami RT Porsche 911 GT3 R of Johannes Zelger just before Forrest’s Elbow are likely to remain deeply ingrained in the memory of anyone who saw them for years to come.

While Zelger mercifully escaped the wreck unharmed, Aron was not as fortunate, sustaining two fractured vertebrae, an injury that has left him away from racing ever since.

But, after a recovery period and a gradual return to the cockpit in private testing, Aron is finally ready to retake the wheel in this weekend’s seventh round of the Nürburgring Langstrecken Series, the six-hour ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen with the Nürburgring 24-winning Winward Racing squad alongside fellow factory driver Luca Stolz.

Up to now, Aron has shied away from discussing the crash and its aftermath with the media, but ahead of his long-awaited return to action, Sportscar365 had the opportunity to speak in-depth with the 28-year-old Estonian and look back on an episode that, while initially shocking, thankfully doesn’t appear to have left him with any lasting scars.

In fact, Aron was surprisingly chirpy when recalling the accident, declaring “I remember everything!” when quizzed about his memories of the events leading up to it.

“I think everyone knows we had radio issues during my stints,” he recalls. “I couldn’t hear the team, but I figured out they could still hear me. I kept talking under it as it’s procedure, just in case they can hear me. So we could communicate with the pit board and the radio.

“Then we did the restart, which went well. I wanted to push on the restart to try and make a gap. Then actually I saw a single yellow flag on top of the mountain. I don’t remember exactly which corner, but it was quite a few marshal posts before the actual accident.

“Just before I actually arrived at the scene of the accident, there was a double yellow. I saw it, but it was just before the accident, and the car was also around a blind corner. I started slowing down for the corner a bit earlier, went in a bit safer to have a bit more control, but when I came around the corner, there were two cars parked in front of me.

“I was slower than I would normally be on a racing lap to try and avoid whatever was ahead. But there was no time to get fully stopped because the track was fully blocked.”

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There can be no denying that the pinnacle of endurance racing is getting more competitive than ever. Seven cars finished on the lead lap of this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, while just 13 seconds separated the top-four in the recent FIA World Endurance Championship round in Brazil — in a contest that did not feature a single safety car to bunch up the pack. When the racing is so close, every single detail counts and that is why the role of the sporting director has become even more important.

Team WRT certainly knows a thing or two about winning — and is riding the crest of a wave in the WEC currently — having long been lauded for its strategy masterclasses. But another key component in its success is the experience of its sporting directors.

Pierre Dieudonne and Thierry Tassin have each triumphed in the 24 Hours of Spa as drivers and are team stalwarts, while they have been more recently joined by Rahel Frey, a class winner at Spa. In fact, there is a bit of a theme here. WRT team principal Vincent Vosse has also conquered the Belgian endurance classic, as has the squad’s GT program manager Kurt Mollekens.

“Vincent tends to recruit racing drivers for a simple reason: we know how it is out there because we’ve done it,” explains Dieudonne, who first visited Spa back in 1955 and won the 24 Hours in a Mazda RX-7 alongside Tom Walkinshaw in 1981. “When you have an engineer coming from school and he’s working on his computer, all he’s interested is here we can earn one tenth of a second, but they lose the big perspective.

“Sometimes it is better to lose two seconds a lap or three seconds a lap and avoid either a penalty or making a mistake, but usually the engineers only see the performance. So it’s very important in a team to have people who keep that helicopter view to steer the boat in the right direction.

“Not many teams employ as many racing drivers as WRT and that’s the reason: it is very important to know what’s happening when you are alone in the car in the dark or in the pouring rain or in the heat. Many people, especially the engineers, are excellent in their field but it’s very important that they keep the perspective that inside the car you have a human being with its weaknesses but also with its strengths.”

So what exactly is the role of the sporting director? First and foremost they need to have an in-depth understanding of the regulations. And that is no easy task.

Initially there’s the FIA’s International Sporting Code that underpins all of the elite competitions — and that runs to 86 pages plus 15 appendices. Then there are the supplementary regulations that are specific to each event. For example, that document numbered 192 pages at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, while at the subsequent CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa it stood at 163 plus appendices.

“And then, on top of that, we have the race director’s briefing notes and the stewards’ bulletins so you keep having a flow of instructions, which sometimes come a few hours before the race,” continues Dieudonne. “First of all, you have to digest that and then make sure you have the time to pass it to your team and make sure nobody makes a mistake.”

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Anyone watching this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, whether in person or on TV, won’t have failed to notice one major cosmetic change to the legendary Circuit de la Sarthe: the change of branding from the famous Dunlop Bridge to the Goodyear Bridge.

Once sister brands under the Goodyear umbrella, the two tire companies are now more or less completely separate entities after Sumitomo Rubber Industries acquired worldwide rights to the Dunlop brand from the American company.

The switch of Le Mans’ most famous piece of trackside advertising is the latest manifestation of a growing commitment to the FIA World Endurance Championship, which began when Dunlop was phased out in favor of Goodyear ahead of the 2019-20 season.

Goodyear then became the sole supplier to the LMP2 class starting in 2021, and three years later, when GTE-Am made way for LMGT3, the Ohio-based firm landed the initial three-year contract to supply the new category. That deal has since been renewed for a further three seasons through to 2029, as announced last month at Le Mans.

According to Xavier Fraipont, who took on his current brief of Vice President, Racing for Goodyear last year, the new deal is a vote of confidence in the work Goodyear has done to ensure a good experience for all nine manufacturers competing in the LMGT3 class.

“It builds on our legacy,” says Fraipont. “We’ve demonstrated our capability to run in the series, to build on what we had done before for many years in endurance racing.

“We’ve shown the pace, we’ve shown also that already at that time we could make the tires which were immediately giving drivers confidence; the famous warm-up issues that some may have, we have been capable really to work hard there and to give that confidence immediately, and also to have that endurance performance.

“I think another of the big reasons why we’ve been trusted is the service – how we handle all the race teams, the way our engineers work with them and help them make sure our tires are used to the best of their capabilities. So those are the things which I think convinced the FIA and ACO to trust us again for another three years.”

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“Who are the top ten endurance racing teams of all time?” That was a question thrown at me just a little while ago. Joest Racing immediately came to mind. Of course it did. It accrued 11 Le Mans 24 Hours victories with Audi, four or five with Porsche (depending how you count it), and one with Bentley.

JW Automotive, too, flashed into my brain courtesy of its trio of victories with Gulf-liveried machinery. The Porsche factory team was another name I chucked back at my questioner. I didn’t say Toyota Racing, but I probably should have done. But after last weekend, if I’m asked again, the Cologne-based operation is going straight to somewhere near the top of my list, if not the very top.

It’s not just that a team that has had various names above the door over the years is now a six-time winner at Le Mans. Nor that win number six, at least from where I’m standing, means more than the previous five.

This, of course, is the first time it has beaten manufacturer opposition in the 24 Hours: its first three wins were notched up in the dying days of LMP1 in 2018-20 and the next two in 2021 and ’22 were early in the Hypercar era before it truly got going. But what really stood out over the course of the 94th running of the great race was Toyota’s ability to overcome adversity, to sort minor issues on the fly in the heat of competition.

Toyota very nearly didn’t win Le Mans this time around, just as it nearly didn’t triumph in 2021, the first year of the car we’re now calling the TR010 Hybrid.

Back then, it had to overcome a fuel filter problem on both its entries and did so ingeniously. Not only were the drivers told to turn the fuel pump on and off in every major braking zone, but new software was written during the race to bring all four fuel pumps into play. Normally only two were pumping at any one time. The result of all this left field thinking was a 1-2 finish.

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I never had so many drivers use the phrase “damage limitation” in pre-race interviews for last weekend’s Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Challenge. It appeared that almost half of the 21-car grid, comprised of the two top professional categories in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, were just looking to survive, collect as many points as possible, and move on to the next event.

While it was clear that some entries, perhaps with less-than-favorable Balance of Performance figures or cars not well-suited for temporary circuits, were literally following that mantra in the 100-minute contest, nearly every car left the downtown streets of Detroit with battle scars and a number of drivers and team owners with heated tempers.

The third running of the GTP and GTD Pro-only sprint race on the 1.645-mile, 10-turn circuit proved to be yet another challenging outing for competitors, who were put in a proverbial bullring in a track that’s next-to-impossible to pass on, leading drivers to make optimistic or downright desperate overtaking measures.

While the Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R of Earl Bamber and Jack Aitken put on one of the most commanding displays in recent GTP history, with Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims earning the win in GTD Pro in a well-executed race, the cars behind them, most notably in the production-based category, appeared to be in a game of pinball, particularly in the closing laps.

IMSA race control issued four drive-through penalties for incident responsibility in the final 12 minutes of the race, which covered nearly 20 percent of the field. And that’s not counting two other sanctions earlier in the running, including a stop-and-hold plus 60-second penalty to then-GTP points leader Laurin Heinrich, who drove the No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie of Roman De Angelis into the wall.

To their full credit, race director Beaux Barfield and everyone in race control were on top of nearly every incident and were rapid in issuing penalties, down to the final lap. Yet it brought back shades of last year’s incident-filled Road America race, which served as a major crackdown in driving standards that was strictly enforced for the remainder of the season.

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A cold, drizzly day at Silverstone may not seem the obvious time or place to prepare for the challenge of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Yet the British circuit, and its notoriously changeable weather, was the scene for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA’s final pre-Le Mans test earlier this month.

Across two days the team experienced a multitude of different conditions as it conducted final preparations for the race, which Cadillac chief engineer Jeromy Moore describes as the manufacturer’s “main goal” for the year.

Silverstone on a chilly day may seem a world away from Circuit de la Sarthe in the summer but Moore says plenty of useful data can still be gathered from testing at the venue.

“It’s got some high-speed content as well as some chicanes – not quite as tight as the Ford Chicane in Le Mans, but we can still gleam aspects from it for what we’re looking into, so it’s a good track,” Moore explains to Sportscar365 about the choice of Silverstone for the test.

Jack Aitken, one of the six JOTA FIA World Endurance Championship drivers to take to the wheel of the Cadillac V-Series.R at Silverstone, adds: “The Porsche Curves at Le Mans and Tertre Rouge fall into a similar category to some of the high-speed stuff here, so that’s good. We can isolate it pretty well for looking at each corner here and bring those learnings across to Le Mans.

“The slow-speed stuff is more common, so almost anywhere we went that would be applicable and then there’s other stuff that’s harder to find like the fact Le Mans is a street circuit, it’s got quite an old surface and you’re not really going to find many places like that, but the high-speed thing is important to tick that box.”

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Less than five years ago, just coming out of the COVID pandemic, there were certain events on the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship schedule that simply struggled to attract fans. The overall demographic was aging and TV ratings were not showing any sizable growth.

It was a wake-up call for the sanctioning body, especially amid Formula 1’s meteoric rise thanks to Netflix’s ‘Drive to Survive’ series that turned that series into almost a household name in sports.

IMSA’s big chance began with the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona, the first race of its new GTP era, which saw many of the same specification top-class prototypes compete not only in the WeatherTech Championship but also FIA World Endurance Championship, in what was coined the start of a ‘Golden Era’ of sports car racing.

There was a visible increase in new and returning fans, but there was also work going on behind the scenes to elevate the series’ digital media presence, both from a social media and broadcast perspective.

While having enjoyed a successful partnership with NBC Sports since 2019, IMSA’s brand and marketing team looked for ways to fill the “white spaces” for further growth, and it’s done just that.

One of its most-documented ‘experiments’ came in 2024 when IMSA’s YouTube channel live-streamed the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring to international audiences. With no pre-event promotion, that race delivered 21,000 peak concurrent views and 505,000 total live views in what was essentially a trial run.

That year, its official YouTube channel started with 290,000 subscribers. Fast forward to today, and more than 1.74 million people subscribe to the channel, a number that surpasses not only IndyCar and the FIA World Endurance Championship but also NASCAR.

With original content such as ‘Win the Weekend presented by Michelin’ which is now in its fourth season, as well as exclusive trackside reports, IMSA’s ‘Endurance Hour’ podcast hosted by Matt Yocum (pictured above) and a plethora of archived footage of historic races, it’s become one of the fastest growing channels in motorsports.

But it’s not just been growth on YouTube. IMSA recently reached 4 million total followers across all of its social media platforms, marking a 208 percent increase since 2023 and considerable 500 percent increase in video consumption, from 98 to 595 million annual views.

According to Zoomph, a leading AI-powered sponsorship measurement and analytics platform, it has put IMSA’s social media value comparable to the New York Knicks NBA basketball team, with an estimated $38 million in social media value from last year alone.

So what’s driven this surge in digital media, particularly in the last 24 months? In speaking with IMSA President John Doonan and IMSA’s Head of Brand and Digital Strategy Doug O’Donnell, it hasn’t been one silver bullet but rather approaches through multiple avenues that has also resulted in record growth in fan attendance and a notably younger demographic.

O’Donnell, who joined IMSA in 2023 after stints with the Ironman Group and the San Antonio Spurs NBA team, admitted he and his team have been playing ‘catch up’ to some of the more established sports properties in digital media but have found creative ways to build the IMSA brand.

“If you look back, some of the larger brands, whether it’s F1, NASCAR, they were promoting [on digital media] ten years ago,” he tells Sportscar365. “So they’ve had a longer ramp. We’ve been catching up in a lot of respects.”

Doonan says the ‘Win the Weekend’ series, which now regularly gets 3 million views per episode, has been largely beneficial for attracting new fans to IMSA according to a market study conducted by Michelin.

“It identified hardcore fans but also a next outer-ring of people, ‘I like motorsports but I don’t even know what I-M-S-A is,’” he says. “The targeting for ‘Win the Weekend’ we all see it but it’s not necessarily aimed for the hardcore fans. It’s for those few outer layers.”

O’Donnell adds: “We were trying to find that broader market that was either interested in sports cars, generally, or car culture itself.”

The other key driving force has been fan engagement on its social media platforms, particularly YouTube, where it received 179,000 chats during this year’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.

IMSA also had an impromptu live stream of the night test session from January’s Roar Before the Rolex 24. That two-hour session, hosted by Yocum and IMSA Radio’s Ryan Myrehn, which was never previously broadcast, drew in more than 259,000 views, including 12,000 simultaneous live viewers at the time of the broadcast, which like the 2024 Sebring trial run, came with no pre-event promos.

Given the seismic growth of its digital properties, it begs the question if IMSA could make the successful switch to digital-only for its race broadcasts, similar to what F1 has done this year in ditching linear TV for an exclusive U.S. broadcast deal with Apple TV.

Both Doonan and O’Donnell stressed the importance of striking a balance, at least for now, given their longtime linear partner NBC Sports.

“There’s a couple of ways of looking at that,” says O’Donnell. “There’s a possibility that yes, we do stay in the model we’re in today. But we also want to continue to figure out where the white spaces for growth are. We know that we have continued opportunity.”

Doonan adds: “There’s no network that we can call that brings audience and is available to everyone, that would give you a 24-hour window, or a 12-hour or a ten-hour or even a six-hour.”

However, through NBC’s digital platforms, namely Peacock, fans are not only able to watch the full season of the WeatherTech Championship live, but also Michelin Pilot Challenge, VP Racing SportsCar Challenge as well as most of the IMSA-sanctioned single-make series as well.

This year, both 100-minute street races at Long Beach and Detroit are on network NBC, marking a continued increased of live free-to-air coverage, which Doonan said had a 11 percent boost in viewership in the crucial 18- to 34-year-old demographic last year.

IMSA has also been able to leverage other NBC sports properties, such as the NBA and Supercross, not only with tune-in reminders but also with in-broadcast segments. Jack Aitken and Alexander Sims attended a Detroit Pistons game, aired on NBC, to cross-promote the upcoming Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, while Trent Hindman was at a Supercross event last month.

Its brand team has also been tailoring its digital content for each platform, given the wide range of demographics between some of the leading social media outlets.

“When we’re marketing and doing content on TikTok, the team is thinking about it a little bit differently on how we post it on TikTok vs. Facebook, because [they reach two different demographics],” says O’Donnell. “There’s a lot of nuances to that so we’re always trying to figure out what’s going to have impact but let’s not get caught in our own bubble of posting the same thing, the same way, everywhere.”

O’Donnell and Doonan say they’re also benchmarking their results not only with sister company NASCAR but within those in the entire IMSA paddock, equating it to a “rising tide lifts all boats” approach.

“There’s constant change on all these channels,” says O’Donnell. “The way they perform, the way the algorithms tighten over time. We’re always trying to stay on top of everything. If I see an anomaly on a trend, sometimes I’ll call a colleague at NASCAR and say, ‘Are you seeing this also?’ If they say yes, we know it’s the platform and it’s not us.”

Doonan adds: “At Daytona we had a meeting with all the teams, with their social/digital/PR folks. We race hard and try to win against each other, in this regard, I think it’s a matter of, ‘Here’s what the series is trying to accomplish. Here’s how you can collaborate or partner with us or how we can help you with our strategies.’

“If we can bring others up, then the whole thing is going to continue to be a solid platform.”

IMSA has also seen a marked increase in trackside attendance, with record crowds at all but one event last year, and new weekend attendance records achieved at both this year’s Rolex 24 (180,000) and Sebring (115,000).

Last year’s Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, which became the series’ first-ever ‘sold out’ event, after ticket sales stopped midway through the race, is undergoing renovations by adding 1,500 additional parking spaces and a new traffic corridor.

Doonan says they’re also reaching out through numerous initiatives, such as its STEM program, working with promoters to invite local school children to the track, well as its newly launched IMSA Labs program, to “capitalize” on the current high-mark of sports car racing globally.

Meanwhile, O’Donnell says there’s still more growth to come on the digital front. Remarkably, 70 percent of viewers to IMSA’s YouTube channel are not current subscribers. “That gives us an idea of how much growth is possible,” he says.

That bodes well entering the next few years, as IMSA, like nearly every form of motorsports, will have to navigate the current geopolitical challenges and automotive climate, which has seen multiple OEMs face significant write-downs on projected EV sales and subsequent reductions in motorsports spend.

Uncertainly looms on the exact number of GTP cars that will be on the WeatherTech Championship grid next year, following the ‘pausing’ of Acura’s program, and others such as Genesis, Ford and McLaren all currently prioritizing top-class involvement in the WEC.

However, given IMSA’s deep paddock filled with 18 automotive partners, as well as packed grids in nearly all of its single-make series, there promises to be no shortage of content.

“The beauty of where GT3 is, where GT4 and even TCR, the automakers have a business model where they’re selling cars, selling spares, selling trackside support,” says Doonan. “From that standpoint, it’s a business model that helps maintain the programs, both customer racing and if they have a factory endorsed effort in a pro category, it allows them to keep that momentum going too.”

If the right moves in the digital and social media world continue to be taken, there’s a strong chance IMSA could be one of the best-positioned motorsports properties for the long-term.

Photos: Mike Levitt & Jake Galstad

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Most mobile phone calls from Monaco to Woking are no doubt made from the Formula 1 pits down near the harbor to the McLaren Technology Centre in the London commuter belt sometime towards the end of May. This one went from up at Casino Square to the terraces of Woking Football Club in early December.

The caller was Stephane Ratel and the recipient my good self on a rare weekend off indulging in his other passion of watching lower-league soccer. Stephane was on his cell to rave about the lineup of machines laid out in front of him, all developed for a new category called GT3. I was pretty nonplussed to be honest and wanted to get back to the football.

That was in December 2005 on the day - a Saturday, hence why I was watching 22 men kick a ball around - of the official launch of GT3 in Monaco. Fast forward five months to the first race for the new breed of car, and I changed my tune. At least to some extent.

I was present for the debut of the category with the inaugural round of the FIA GT3 European Championship at Silverstone in May 2006, and I couldn’t fail to be impressed.

A grid of more than 40 cars, split between eight types, was certainly an impressive kick-off. But my thought, as an occasional hobby racer, was that I should save my pennies, give up booze and possibly sell a kidney to get myself out in one of the cars. I fancied a race or two in the Chevrolet Corvette, the Z06R GT3 developed by Callaway Competition and Carsport Holland.

What I couldn’t have imagined was how quickly GT3 would grow out of my price range, let alone what it would become. But then nor could Ratel. GT3 was conceived as a budget category for the amateur, with an emphasis on sprint racing. So it wasn’t really my focus as a journalist.

As GT3 celebrates its 20th birthday this week, it is the predominant form of GT racing worldwide. I witnessed it quickly progress from merely a home of the forty-something gentleman driver contesting a couple of one-hour dashes with a mate, to something much, much more than that.

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In late January, a flurry of stories appeared across many parts of the sports car racing media suggesting that Honda was on the cusp of green-lighting a program in the FIA World Endurance Championship with a rebadged version of the Acura ARX-06 LMDh car.

Rumors of a Honda WEC entry have cropped up at various times almost since the start of the Hypercar/LMDh era, which is to be expected given the success Meyer Shank Racing has enjoyed with the ARX-06 in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

But this time the speculation was both more detailed and more widely reported than previous instances, and numerous respected outlets with strong track records of accuracy on such matters ran stories stating that official confirmation of an effort could be imminent.

And yet, more than two months down the line from those stories appearing, no confirmation has been forthcoming, and as of the time of writing, on the eve of the delayed start to the 2026 season at Imola, the prospects of Honda joining McLaren and Ford as newcomers to the WEC Hypercar class as soon as next year are understood to be zero.

That’s not to say Honda in the WEC will never happen, and HRC president Koji Watanabe spoke positively about the appeal of the series in an exclusive interview with Sportscar365 last year, not long after the previous batch of rumors surfaced regarding the matter.

But those hoping to see the ARX-06 eventually share a track with the likes of Ferrari, Toyota and Peugeot are unfortunately likely to still have quite a while longer to wait.

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Much has been written about the current era representing a golden age for sports car racing. With additional manufacturers still developing new cars and others rumored to be plotting entries, interest in the top tier of endurance competition remains strong.

However, there are a few little signs that golden glow could be getting slightly tarnished in places.

It’s no secret that the European automotive market is in turmoil and Porsche Penske Motorsport has already exited the Hypercar class of the FIA World Endurance Championship, while Alpine is departing at the end of this upcoming season.

But one manufacturer that appears committed for the long haul is Ferrari.

Yes, it undoubtedly helps when you have won three consecutive editions of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and have finally ended a drought of more than 50 years without a top-class world sports car championship victory.

Yet Ferrari’s participation in the WEC with its 499P Hypercar runs far deeper than that success and is evidenced by the unique self-funding model the Italian brand employs.

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No Bob Tullius, no Jaguar victories at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1988 and ’90. That’s my theory. It’s why sports car aficionados in Europe as well as those across the Pond in North America should be mourning the death of Tullius last month at the age of 95.

He and his Group 44 team only wrote the opening few pages of the second chapter of Jaguar’s Le Mans story; it was left to Tom Walkinshaw Racing to provide the bulk. But without him the book might well have remained closed and the British manufacturer’s victory tally at the Circuit de la Sarthe stuck on the five it notched up in the 1950s.

Obituaries of Tullius made great play of his 14 SCCA titles, focusing on them before mentioning that it was he and Group 44 that took Jaguar back to Le Mans in 1984. The significance of those titles and the couple notched up in Trans-Am in the 1970s was to give Jaguar the confidence to make a return to sports car racing in the IMSA GT Championship from 1982 and ultimately go on to Le Mans in 1984 with him and his team.

Had Jaguar, part of the state-owned British Leyland automotive conglomerate, not had a long-standing relationship with a highly-successful and ultra-professional team, would it have embarked on a project in the still-new GTP prototype class in the early 1980s? Probably not.

Tullius’s relationship with the British automotive industry stretched all the way back to his earliest days in racing. He was given a Triumph TR4 to race in 1962 on the back of his initial successes with a TR3 — his wife’s car! - by the U.S. importer. Triumph was subsumed into British Leyland Motor Company along with Jaguar as the 1960s drew to a close, which explains why Tullius switched to the E type and then the XJS midway through the ‘70s.

Jaguar Cars Inc. vice president Mike Dale knew he could count on Tullius and his team as he looked for a way to re-invigorate Jaguar as a marque at a time that BL was withdrawing all its other brands, Triumph included, from the North America marketplace. Besides its successes on the race track, Group 44 set new standards for preparation and presentation in North America and probably beyond.

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The date was Jan. 24, 2020 when executives from the ACO and IMSA confirmed on the creation of the LMDh platform, in a packed drivers’ meeting room at Daytona International Speedway.

The historic agreement, which saw both ACO President Pierre Fillon and IMSA Chairman Jim France sign an agreement that outlined the “guiding principles” for LMDh, a formula initially known as ‘DPi 2.0’ before the ACO, and to a regulatory extent, the FIA became involved, it marked a monumental time for global sports car racing.

The same platform of top-class prototypes became eligible to compete in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and World Endurance Championship beginning with the 2023 seasons. Although there was still some low hanging fruit in that the FIA and ACO’s own set of prototype technical regulations, LMH, would also be eligible and performance balanced with LMDh.

Toyota became the first major manufacturer to roll out with a LMH car, in 2021, alongside the privateer Glickenhaus effort, and one year later Peugeot as a full works effort, but there was a problem already brewing. Both the GR010 Hybrid and 9X8, and in 2023, Ferrari’s 499P, were all effectively four-wheel drive prototypes, with its bespoke hybrid systems mounted on the front axle and able to be deployed at defined speed thresholds.

It quickly became the biggest stumbling block in properly balancing the two different types of prototypes, with the LMDh cars, while still carrying a hybrid system, although a spec unit, had far less powerful motors and a smaller battery, but most critically mounted to the rear axle of the cars based around what was envisioned to be next-gen LMP2-style chassis spines.

Toyota, running virtually unopposed, racked up its fourth and fifth overall victories in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2021-22 prior to the arrival of the Prancing Horse, with which then went on to take a hat-trick of wins in the French endurance classic.

While last year’s edition was arguably the hardest-fought, with Team Penske’s No. 6 Porsche 963, built to LMDh regulations, finished just 14.084 seconds behind the winning Ferrari, it still served as another wake-up call to manufacturers and sanctioning bodies, the latter, however, never to publicly admit it, that it will unlikely to fully achieve parity between the two drastically different technical platforms.

Talks between OEMs on the potential of a single set of technical regulations for the top class, whether you call it Hypercar in the WEC or GTP in the WeatherTech Championship, were already well underway before Ferrari’s third Le Mans win.

However, it was at last June’s annual ACO press conference where the talks got more serious. While the FIA and ACO announced an “extension” of the Hypercar class through at least the 2032 season, IMSA and the ACO confirmed a continued “strategic alliance” through the same time period.

Behind the scenes, preliminary work was already underway in manufacturer working group meetings on what a common set of technical regulations — essentially merging LMH and LMDh together — could look like, with the target of having a single set of regs for 2030 in both the WEC and WeatherTech Championship.

More than nine months later, where are we at? The initial goal from the governing bodies was to present a unified set of regulations at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. However, based on what’s believed to be the current stage of discussions, it appears that progress is being made slower than what some had initially had hoped for.

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Sometimes, change can be a good thing in sports car racing. While there would arguably be an uproar if the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa or Nürburgring 24 turn into six or 12-hour races, going against decades of tradition, SRO America’s latest bet, in shaking up the series format of GT World Challenge America powered by AWS from two 90-minute races to a single three-hour headline race, appears to already be paying dividends.

Case in point: This weekend’s season opener at Sonoma Raceway is set to see a 20-car GT3 grid, the largest field for its flagship championship in a regular-format race weekend since 2019, in what was the first year of SRO Motorsports Group’s new-look GT World Challenge branding across America, Europe and Asia.

It was also the last time SRO America, under the leadership of President and CEO Greg Gill, made a major format shift, going away from World Challenge’s traditional single-driver sprint races to fully embracing the two-driver ‘SprintX’ formula that was first introduced in 2016 and gradually took over, despite mixed feelings from competitors at the time.

While that ‘old-school’ sprint format lives on in the FIA Bronze rated driver-enforced GT America powered by AWS series, Gill is hoping the latest “major upgrade” to SRO America will ultimately not only result in larger grids, but also better and more cost-effective GT racing.

As he explains, it wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction, but in fact more than a year in the making.

“While there’s been exciting growth in GT World Challenge, people that are part of the industry are aware that [discussions of a format change] have been going on since Sonoma last year,” Gill tells Sportscar365. “We have been talking with people both inside and outside the paddock about the best format.

“What was quickly established was that there was a tremendous interest in a 60-minute format, but it was also equally acknowledged that there were a ton of places that 40, 50 and 60-minute races, and even 100-minute races were already happening.

“What’s been the big success for SRO globally, particularly in Europe, with yet another sold out grid this year? Longer races.

“As we queried people in and out of the paddock and logged their votes for it, in reality what you saw was two 90-minute races now becoming 180 minutes on Sunday, allowing the teams more strategy, and at the same time what was equally important was allowing people to have a three-day weekend.

“People’s time is so important in today’s busy climate. They now start Friday morning and leave Sunday afternoon. That was really critical. You get the advantage of more time on track but less time at the circuit overall.

“That allowed in the same way, as we’ve seen in other series, of starting things on Thursday and running through Saturday in our other classes allowing us to do the same thing for GT4 America and TC America.”

The format shakeup, announced at last year’s 24 Hours of Spa as part of Stephane Ratel’s annual SRO press conference, didn’t come without resistance from a few series’ competitors, which were adamantly against the change. One team even attempted to gather paddock support to force a reversal, leveraging their OEM partner at the time to pressure the higher-ups. 

However, SRO America held firm on its new direction, despite rumors of the majority of its paddock not returning for the 2026 season that were making the rounds at last October’s season-ending Indianapolis 8 Hour presented by AWS weekend, which turned out to be wide of the mark. 

While DXDT Racing and sister outfit Regulator Racing, along with Heart of Racing Team, have elected not to return, there have been growth within existing teams, such as JMF Motorsports expanding into a two-car Mercedes-AMG operation and AF Corse committing to a season-long Pro class Ferrari effort for the first time.

But it’s the newcomers or returning teams after several years away, driven by the new format, is what’s brought optimism for the season ahead.

Former GTWC America competitors TR3 Racing and McCann Racing have returned, while Riley Motorsports is set to mount its first full season effort in three years, bringing sister squad Kellymoss along with an impressive three-car Porsche effort, in addition to two Wright Motorsports entries.

A series record nine GT3 manufacturers are represented, including the return of Lamborghini, and beginning at the second event of the season at Circuit of The Americas, the series debut of IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge front-runners Rebel Rock Racing with its Aston Martin, while Ford has committed to supporting a Pro class entry for Dollahite Racing for the first time.

Gill says the mix of new and returning teams has brought “a nice level of energy” to the paddock.

“We’re also recognizing that as we start at Sonoma, this is brand new,” he says. “We’ve spent a lot of time with everybody in the off season, first starting with Jacquie Groom (SRO’s global sporting director) and everybody in Europe on the sporting regs.

“This is not reinventing the wheel. We’re doing these formats in Europe, so we had a baseline. But what we recognized, just as there are some things that are unique to North America, one of them being restarts. That doesn’t happen in other SRO series around the world. We have to be mindful of those things.

“We’ve spent a lot of time in answering questions, and will again in the briefings at Sonoma so that everybody becomes comfortable with the new format and they also feel free to comment and be part of it. We sent out draft sporting regs [last year] so the teams could give us feedback and have that communication process with us.”

While nearly mirroring the format seen in the ultra-successful GTWC Europe Endurance Cup, which features three-hour races and capacity grids, Gill says he understands there has to be a level of ‘North America’ to its new structure, which has also taken place.

“I think this is a major upgrade in what we’re doing,” he says. “It’s been very well received, so it’s confirmed in that regard already. We can’t claim to be the first series to say ‘by the racers, for the racers’. However, I do think our focus has been always on what we can do to bring the most value to the participants first, and then to the fans, to give them something that they can really enjoy and see.

“One of the great things that Stephane Ratel always brings up is that you’re winning in an overall GT race. Multi-class racing is exciting in itself. It’s a different subject and a different style. This is straight GT racing where you’re racing for the win in your class. That’s always going to be one of the most important points of what we do. 

“When Stephane finished the 2019 season and had a meeting with Brian Hughes (SRO America VP of Operations) and myself and he talked about what we should do going into the 2020 season — and of course we didn’t know about the pandemic and the different things that were going to happen.

“He said, ‘It was an important time. I want this to be truly SRO America. It is SRO first. Second it’s in America. Make sure it goes that way.’

“I think this is that next step. It’s the next generation of Stephane’s influence and intention to be the best GT racing in the world. Going into the three-hour format is really a good way. At the same time, we’re retaining things like GT America, where we still have single driver sprint races. 

“On the same token, look at the strength of Pirelli GT4 America where we have 31 cars enrolled for the year. The strength is still there for what we might call that traditional two-race format. I think we’re seeing the best of both worlds.”

While all of the ‘standard’ event weekends will feature three-hour races, the Indianapolis 8 Hour remains unchanged, and with the bolstered grid of full season entrants, Gill says he feels “very comfortable” of reaching 30 GT3 cars in the joint Intercontinental GT Challenge round in October for the first time.

“If you’re not changing, you’re going backwards,” adds Gill. “There’s no static in motorsports. There’s no same-old, same-old. We had six seasons with the two 90-minute races. It did not grow and did not attract new people. Now we move forward with our SRO core value of listening to our racers and working to deliver the best GT racing possible.”

Photos: Fabian Lagunas/SRO America

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This weekend, the new Porsche Carrera Cup Asia season kicks off with a pair of races on the undercard of the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai International Circuit.

As the debut race weekend for the all new Type-992.2 Porsche 911 Cup car, it promises to be a significant occasion. But it’s also worth highlighting the increasingly diverse pool of drivers who are set to fight it out for overall honors in the Pro class at the sharp end of the field.

Starting in 2024, Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific’s Talent Pool has been offering aspiring professional racers a chance to not only join the Carrera Cup Asia grid, but also to forge closer links with Porsche and potentially climb the marque’s ladder in the way factory stars like Matt Campbell, Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich have done over the years.

This year, the Talent Pool comprises of a record eight drivers, six of whom are total newcomers to one-make Porsche competition were selected off the back of the Talent Pool Assessment Days, which took place last November at Sepang in Malaysia.

Emerging from the process with Carrera Cup Asia race seats were Amna Al Qubaisi, Naquib Azlan, ‘Ricky’ Liu Ruiqi, Alex Sawer, Seth Gilmore and Joshua Berry, who join series returnees Rodrigo Almeida and Marco Giltrap on this year’s Talent Pool roster.

For Carrera Cup Asia series manager Alexandre Imperatori, finding race seats for half of the drivers who turned up at Sepang to show their skills, both on and off the track, represents a major success, as a grid of 30 brand-new 911 Cup cars gets set for action at Shanghai.

“I think it’s a pretty good conversion rate,” says Imperatori. “After the test, we helped put the drivers in touch with teams, who were able to figure out a deal with them. And the most important thing is that we have an idea of how everybody performed in the test, and the top performers are all with us this year, so that’s something we’re really happy with.”

So, just how exactly did Imperatori and his team go about determining which of the 12 drivers at Sepang would actually be given the chance to race in Carrera Cup Asia?

The process took place across three days, starting with a day of off-track activities that saw the drivers travel to Porsche’s corporate offices in downtown Kuala Lumpur. There, they took part in workshops and interviews designed to assess the way they presented themselves, as well as their technical knowledge and, as importantly, their motivation for being present.

Sportscar365 also had a role to play in this process, as this writer conducted a ‘mock’ interview with each of the 12 drivers. Most of them were impressive in the way they came across while being interrogated, especially considering their young age and that many of them wouldn’t have dealt much with media in the categories they had raced in so far.

Then it was on to two-days of on-track assessments at Sepang, where three Cup cars (the previous 992.1 model, without ABS) were prepared by EKS Motorsports. Four drivers shared a car, having been divided into three groups according to height and weight in the interests of fairness. On hand to provide a reference was Enzo Trulli, who came through the same assessment at the end of 2024 and went on to impress so much in Carrera Cup Asia that he was appointed Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific’s selected driver for this year.

Meanwhile, Sascha Maassen was present to oversee proceedings, performing the same role as he does for Porsche’s global young driver shootout. For Maassen, the biggest factor in the assessment was not the raw pace, but the rate of improvement and how the drivers, most of whom were sampling Cup machinery for the very first time, responded to feedback.

“There are different characters,” says Maassen. “Some people are very confident. And those people we need to get settled down because they are tending to push too early, too much. But if I can still see talent there, it’s not a problem. if we manage to get that under control.

“There’s not one particular thing we want to see. We expect that they take it seriously, that they show their best. It’s about the ability to progress, the potential that we see. This can be in different forms. Somebody who maybe spun in the first lap, we don’t want to see that, but they can still be good. And if someone is really controlled, but not going fast enough, then we need to push them, and we have to see that they can actually take advice.

“Whatever the starting point, we want to see them moving forward. And that can be from both ends, super-aggressive or overconfident, or the one that is too cautious.”

The two days at Sepang comprised a day of short runs on old tires, and then a day of race simulations on new tires. Imperatori and his team then reviewed the lap times, as well as all the other feedback from off the track, to create an internal ‘ranking’ of drivers that was then shared with interested team owners, several of whom were also on-site at Malaysia.

Ultimately, Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific cannot force any team to sign a particular driver. But the assessment is designed to allow teams to tailor their budget requirements and put the best-performing drivers in a strong position to strike a deal. Imperatori admits that of the six top performers at Sepang, one slipped through the net, but otherwise, the drivers chosen to race generally match the ‘ranking’ compiled during the assessment.

Looking at not only the six Talent Pool newcomers but also the drivers who did not ultimately advance to the championship itself, there was a clear desire to try out younger single-seater drivers, instead of drivers with prior Carrera Cup experience elsewhere. Additionally, there was a clear emphasis on trying out drivers from the Asia-Pacific region, even with less experience. Hence why the 12-strong Sepang lineup featured three Chinese drivers, including Han Cenyu and ‘Dylan’ Jia Zhanbin as well as Liu, in addition to drivers from India (Akshay Bohra), Malaysia (Azlan), Singapore (Berry) and Vietnam (Sawer).

Imperatori is keen to highlight two drivers in particular he is excited to see in action this season. The first is Azlan (pictured above), who has a highly unusual background, having emerged from sim racing before becoming established in real-life competition in both his native Malaysia and Japan.

Azlan, Imperatori reveals, was the top performer from the Sepang assessment, and underlined that promise with the fastest time in the official pre-season test in Shanghai.

“Naquib applied for the 2024 assessment test, but we didn’t select him, so by applying again he showed us that he is really committed,” says Imperatori. “In the meantime, he had managed to do a season in GT4, so we could also start to see his potential.

“He really impressed us in the test, especially given he has relatively little actual experience in real race cars. So it was really almost a no-brainer. We really wanted to make sure he had a shot in the championship to show what he can do. And so far, he hasn’t put a foot wrong.”

The other driver Imperatori highlights is second-generation Emirati racer Al Qubaisi (pictured below), who at 25 is the oldest of the new intake but is still fairly new to sports car racing, having only made the switch last year, sharing a car with her sister Hamda in the Ligier European Series.

“She did a good job in the assessment test,” says Imperatori. “It was not easy with her driving position; she couldn’t show 100 percent what she could do in the test, but now the team has really been working with her very closely and she’s getting really comfortable with the car with Team Jebsen, so that’s also going to be something to watch and follow.”

Last season, Carrera Cup Asia was dominated by Dylan Pereira, who is no longer part of the series this year. Replacing Pereira as the ‘benchmarks’ the Talent Pool hopefuls must try and beat are a pair of fast Frenchmen, Porsche junior Marcus Amand and Supercup veteran Marvin Klein, who was also runner-up to Amand in Carrera Cup France last year.

But Imperatori is certain that on the evidence so far, this year’s title battle is going to be much closer, especially given how quickly the new Talent Pool drivers have been able to get up to speed at the wheel of their brand-new machines in pre-season testing.

“At the very front, we’ll have some really good benchmarks with Marvin and Marcus, who is also still very young,” he says. “And we’ve seen now after the test that the top Talent Pool drivers definitely can mix it in. As well as Naquib, Marco was doing a good job and was very close. Rodrigo was also very close, and he’s in his third year, so he has the experience now.

“And I think we haven’t seen the best of the young guys yet. They need a bit more time. They’re just coming from F4 and some of them are only 17, 18 years old, so they’ll take a couple of races really to find their feet. I’m pretty sure they’ll be there towards the end of the season. So maybe not for the title, but they will be there towards the end.

“I don’t think it will be just one guy running away with it this year. There should be a much closer championship.”

Photos: Porsche/Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific

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While it is relatively common for ex-Formula 1 drivers to seek out new homes in sports car racing after losing their seats, direct moves from F1 to GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS are virtually unheard of. But there is another high-profile paddock figure who reached the pinnacle of his profession who, not too long ago, made exactly that move.

The person in question is not a driver, nor a team boss, nor even an engineer. Instead, it’s Niels Wittich, who joined SRO Motorsports Group last year to serve as the new GTWC Europe race director, having held a similar role in F1 until the fall of 2024.

Wittich was rather thrust into the spotlight in 2022 after the defenestration of his immediate predecessor Michael Masi, the person in charge at the time of F1’s infamous title-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2021. Initially, the German shared the race director role with FIA World Endurance Championship race director Eduardo Freitas before taking on the role solo for the final races of 2022, plus the full 2023 season and most of 2024.

That was until he was suddenly dumped by the FIA after that year’s Brazilian Grand Prix, for reasons that still haven’t been adequately explained to Wittich to this day.

“It appears that the President of the FIA [Mohammed Ben Sulayem] decided for whatever reason to get rid of me, and I still have no idea why that was,” Wittich tells Sportscar365. “I asked several times, but didn’t get any response. He doesn’t have to do that, which is fine with me. However, it ended, and so I was available for whatever else.”

But F1’s loss turned out to be SRO’s gain, when the latter organization needed a replacement for Alain Adam for the final round of the GTWC Europe Endurance Cup season in Jeddah, a venue that Wittich was familiar with from his F1 work.

“It happened by surprise,” recalls Wittich. “When my career at the FIA ended, Didi [Cazzago] from GT World Challenge Europe called me to ask if I could be available for the final round in Jeddah. He gave me a call, because they were short on a race director.

“My first race ever was the final round in Jeddah [in 2024], and then they asked me if it would be a good thing to start for the full season, and I happily agreed.”

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Another manufacturer is quitting the FIA World Endurance Championship. Alpine’s departure at the end of the 2026 season will make it the third major carmaker to step away from the Hypercar ranks. Given that we are only entering the fourth season of our so-called ‘golden age’ that may sound worrying. The question is whether there is a trend, some kind of connection between the pull-outs of Lamborghini, Porsche and now Alpine.

Viewing the situation under a microscope would suggest there isn’t. Renault-owned Alpine, like Lamborghini and Porsche before it, had its own reasons for opting to stop at the end of the season that kicks off in Qatar next month.

A brand that will sell only electric vehicles from later this year cited slower than expected growth in the EV market as the reason for the realignment of its motorsport strategies and the decision to park its A424 LMDh-based prototypes.

The roadmap a manufacturer lays out for its future inevitably has to be adjusted or re-routed over time, and sometimes as a result of a change in company leadership. It may or may not be coincidence that a new boss at Renault arrived last summer. The incoming Francois Provost is said to be no fan of motorsport.

There’s a story about the new boss of one carmaker involved in Formula E taking up his role and looking at an FE racer and deciding forthwith that its involvement in the series had to end. His reasoning was that the car didn’t resemble anything the company sold for the road, exuded none of its brand values. The tale may or may not be true, so it would be unfair to name the company. I’m just saying that sometimes things can change almost on a whim.

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The 2020 running of the Bathurst 12 Hour will be remembered for a number of reasons. It was Bentley’s breakthrough first major endurance win with its Continental GT3, in a record 33-car GT3 entry that comprised of nine registered Intercontinental GT Challenge manufacturers, which were signing up left and right. Even Ferrari had jumped on board the week of the race.

There was a true sense of excitement and optimism building for Stephane Ratel’s latest and greatest project, which was due to have five races on as many continents that year.

However, less than six weeks after Jules Gounon, Jordan Pepper and Maxime Soulet hoisted the winner’s trophy in Australia, the motorsports world came to a screeching halt due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While other championships were able to adapt and continue to run races, albeit behind closed doors and primarily in Europe and parts of the U.S., IGTC was struggling to stay alive due to its global nature and the next-to-impossible task of getting competitors to far-flung destinations such as South Africa and Japan.

Bathurst didn’t return until 2022 while the Suzuka 1000km was canceled altogether in and only revived after SRO Motorsports Group, in a bold move, took over full promotion of the event in 2025, years after the draconian-style health restrictions were lifted in the country.

Ask anyone in the sports car racing world and IGTC was the hardest hit by the pandemic. What was shaping up to be a banner year of worldwide GT3 endurance racing in 2020 was nearly completely lost due to matters out of SRO’s control.

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There’s no denying that McLaren as a motorsport brand is riding the crest of a wave at the moment. After finally ending a 25-year wait for Formula 1 constructors’ championship glory in 2024, Lando Norris ensured there was a double title success for the Woking team last year. Over in IndyCar, Pato O’Ward has established the Arrow McLaren squad as a regular frontrunner. And now it is attempting to add another successful program to its portfolio with a return to the top tier of sports car racing for the first time since the mid-1990s.

James Barclay is the man tasked with leading McLaren’s bid to add to its overall victory in 1995 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. And he is someone who knows what it takes to build successful motorsport operations.

Barclay was involved in the Le Mans-winning Bentley Speed 8 program at the marketing and PR capacity as well helping get the Continental GT3 program green-lighted before spearheading Jaguar’s entry into Formula E, developing the Big Cat into a perennial title contender. He was then head-hunted by McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown to lead the brand’s Hypercar entry into the FIA World Endurance Championship for 2027 – but it is not a task he is undertaking alone.

One of the early announcements following the official confirmation of McLaren’s LMDh-based prototype was that the manufacturer would be partnering with United Autosports to operate the as-yet-unnamed cars.

Given Brown co-founded the United squad, this was hardly the most surprising news of 2025. However, beyond the American’s link between the two companies, it is a deal that makes sense as it enables McLaren to tap into United’s sports car prowess, which includes a multitude of LMP2 titles.

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